Kukla's Korner Hockey

"I'm waiting for the owners who love the game and want to play to say 'Enough is enough,'" Buffalo goalie Ryan Miller told (Josh) Rimer. "If they showed us they have respect for the game and respect for the players the deal would come much sooner than using a lockout to hurt us."

The NHL game has paid Ryan Miller over $27 million in lifetime earnings. It sounds like the game has shown plenty of respect to the son of an East Lansing software consultant, a multi- multi-millionaire who has wed a Hollywood actress.

Then again, maybe we're just out of touch with what "respect" means these days. Or the kind of life a hockey player is supposed to be satisfied with.

Comments

It sounds like the game has shown plenty of respect to the son of an East Lansing software consultant, a multi- multi-millionaire who has wed a Hollywood actress.

Then again, maybe we’re just out of touch with what “respect” means these days. Or the kind of life a hockey player is supposed to be satisfied with.

The issue of respect isn’t about raw dollars. It’s about an employer that has shown an M.O. of asking for givebacks on contracts that they willingly rushed to sign. Regardless of the amount, it is disrespectful to agree to one thing and then use strong-arm tactics to get another. It is also disrespectful when the employer gets almost everything they want, only to realize that what they wanted wasn’t that good, and then throw a hissy fit about it a few years on.

I would have to think that the players would be more than willing to offer a better revenue split if the league wasn’t asking for them A) in a way that requires existing, agreed upon contracts to be rolled back, and B) to take the hit right on the chin in a single year.

The owners could’ve approached this thing with more grace. They could’ve admitted the mistakes that they made in the last CBA, and approached negotiations with an open mind toward revenue sharing and luxury taxes, with slower year-over-year HRR percentage rollbacks. But instead, they just made a proposal that doubled down on their own past mistakes.

The owners are entirely incompetent when it comes to controlling their own costs, while the players are totally out of touch with the real world as they collect 57 per cent of the revenues with that insipid sense of entitlement.

The owners are entirely incompetent when it comes to controlling their own costs

People. Stop this.

It did not matter how much the owners signed players to in their SPCs under the old CBA

It will not matter how much the owners sign players to in the NEXT CBA, either.

It does not matter if every team in the NHL spends to the cap floor, or if every team in the NHL spends to the cap ceiling.

Regardless of the total amount NHL teams dole out in SPCs, the amount of money the players receive as a group is MANDATED BY THE TERMS OF THE CBA.

It does not matter if NHL teams award 4 billion dollars in SPCs or if they award $37.50 in SPCs. The players, collectively, will receive whatever % of HRR they are set to receive under the terms of their CBA. It is completely impossible for them to receive either more or less than their designated amount.

This is exactly why a hard cap and a salary rollback was necessary in the first place. It took a 24% across the board rollback in player salaries just to get the player share of revenue to 54%.

Think about that for a second. Doing a quick bit of regressive math, before the cap was put in place players were getting around {b]70% of revenue. 10 years ago there was a 30-70 Owner/player split of HRR. Are you bleeping kidding me?

So yes, I can certainly see why the NHLPA is aghast that they are going to have to take it in the cornhole two negotiations in a row. Tough cookies. There isn’t a major league anywhere that will tolerate giving 57% of revenues to the players. That is patent insanity.

That the previous CBA ended up with that kind of a revenue split is a testament to two things: 1) How unbelievably good the players had it before and 2) how incredibly stupid the NHL is at writing CBAs.